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Scientists from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have developed a two-stage detection method of early stage Alzheimer's. They published their study in the journal Alzheimer and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment, and Illness. Current methods only detect Alzheimer's disease when plaques are formed in the brain.
"This has paved the way for early-stage therapeutic approaches, where the still ineffective drugs on which we had built our hopes could prove effective," says Professor Klaus Gerwert of the RUB Biophysics Department.
Klaus Gerwert and his team of researchers diagnosed the misfolding of beta-amyloid protein due to changes in pathology even before the first symptoms appeared. This diagnosis can be made by a simple blood test. Thus, the detection can be made eight years before the appearance of the first symptoms. However, the team had to try to optimize the test because there are cases of false positive diagnosis for 9% of the study participants.
This has improved by introducing a two-level diagnostic method. First, they used the original blood test. Second, they used tau protein, a specific dementia biomarker, to determine if the patient was really positive with Alzheimer's disease. The probability of Alzheimer's disease is high if both biomarkers have shown a positive result.
"Thanks to the combination of the two badyzes, 87 out of 100 patients were correctly identified in our study", summarizes Klaus Gerwert. "And we reduced the number of diagnoses of false positives in healthy subjects to 3 out of 100. The second badysis is performed in cerebrospinal fluid extracted from the spinal cord.
"New clinical studies of early participants in the disease can be started," says Gerwert. He hopes that existing therapeutic antibodies will always have an effect. "Recently, two large promising studies have failed, including Crenezumab and Aducanumab – not least because it was probably already too late at the time of taking the treatment.The new test opens a new therapeutic window."
"Once the amyloid plaques are formed, it seems that the disease can no longer be treated," says Dr. Andreas Nabers, head of the research group and co-developer of the Alzheimer's sensor. "If our attempts to stem the progression of Alzheimer's disease fail, it will put a lot of pressure on our society."
The RUB biophysics department has fully automated the blood test process. "The sensor is easy to use, robust with regard to fluctuating biomarker concentration and standardized, "says Andreas Nabers. We are currently conducting extensive research to detect the second in order to provide a blood-only test in the future, "concludes Klaus Gerwert.
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